Liberals slipping in Atlantic Canada polls
HALIFAX — With three weeks left until the federal election, Atlantic Canada is looking like less of a fortress for the Liberals.
As of Monday, the poll aggregator Canada338 showsed the Conservatives leading in three of Nova Scotia's 11 ridings — Sydney-Victoria, West Nova and CumberlandColchester. A fourth, Cape Breton-Canso, is listed as a “toss-up” between the Liberal incumbent Mike Kelloway and Fiona MacLeod of Dunvegan, who worked in Ottawa for 32 years as a staffer in the House of Commons and the Senate.
The riding of Halifax, meanwhile, is listed as a tossup between incumbent Liberal Andy Filmore and former provincial MLA Lisa Roberts of the NDP.
The Liberals are listed as “safe” in Kings-Hants and Halifax-West, with SackvillePreston-Chezzecook and Dartmouth-Cole Harbour listed as “Liberal Likely.” Central Nova, longtime blue under the MacKay family and former prime minister Brian Mulroney, is listed as “leaning” toward incumbent Liberal Sean Fraser.
This all compares to 2019 when the Tories only managed to take one seat in West Nova under Chris D'Entremont and 2015 when the province was entirely red.
Across Atlantic Canada the Liberals came into this federal election holding 27 of the 32 seats.
Monday's polling totals showed the Liberals getting 41 per cent of the popular vote in Atlantic Canada, the Conservatives 31 per cent, NDP 19 per cent and the Green Party five per cent.
“The Liberals cannot take those 27 seats for granted because there will be some really tough competition,” said Tom Urbaniak, political science professor at Cape Breton University.
While he considers the Atlantic Canada-wide polls to have reasonable margins of error, he cautions against putting too much weight on the riding-by-riding breakdowns.
“There's a bit of a grain of salt that needs to be taken with regards to (Canada338's) methodology — they're not able to burrow down to candidate factors at the riding level or look qualitatively at how a campaign or local issue will play out at that level,” said Urbaniak.
Canada338 aggregates all available polling data, incorporates data from the previous election and changing demographic trends/voter tendency.
Nationally, as of Monday, the Conservatives were polling at 33.5 per cent of the popular vote (142 seats), the Liberals at 32.1 per cent (137 seats), NDP with 19.6 per cent (34 seats), Bloc Quebecois (23 seats) with 6.2 per cent and the Green Party with 4.2 per cent (1 seat).
“A political science textbook that who the local candidate is in the riding is relatively minimal — counting for maybe 5-10 per cent of the vote,” said Urbaniak. “But in Atlantic Canada the particular candidate matters a lot more because they are the face and navigator of government for local residents.”
Urbaniak points to SydneyVictoria as a particularly interesting race. Held by Liberal Mark Eyking for 19 years, the race got close in 2019 when new Liberal candidate Jaime Battiste beat Conservative Eddie Orrell (former MLA for Northside-Westmount) by 1,309 votes. This year Battiste has a strong challenger in the form of Jeff Ward of Membertou from the NDP and Orrell is back in blue for a rematch.
“With Ward running a vigorous campaign, there is a chance for a split of the vote,” said Urbaniak.